


Confabulation

by istia



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: F/M, Guys Being Guys, Light-Hearted, M/M, POV Rodney McKay, Post Episode: s05e20 Enemy at the Gate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-12
Updated: 2011-02-12
Packaged: 2017-10-15 14:35:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/istia/pseuds/istia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney discovers the benefits of becoming a kinder, nicer person. Oh, and one little pitfall. Set after the series finale.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Confabulation

**1.**  
John Sheppard and Jennifer Keller were vastly different people, fundamentally unalike in all significant ways from age to personalities to life experiences. The one quirk they shared, then, could be seen as a mite ironic: They both found Rodney McKay attractive.

Even in their one area of similarity, however, they remained poles apart: Jennifer overtly liked Rodney _despite_ his being a complete and utter asshole, whereas Sheppard more covertly liked Rodney precisely _because_ he was a total dick.

 **2.**  
Rodney had never particularly minded being viewed as a petty, arrogant, anti-social, assholish jerk; or, more accurately, he'd never wasted much time thinking about it at all before meeting Jennifer. Jennifer was brilliant, the most surefire turn-on in the world. As an amazing bonus, she was brilliant in a young, very hot, blonde-headed, curvaceous bod, a killer combo that, honestly, blew every other woman he'd ever met out of the freaking water! Even Sam Carter, brilliant and blonde and curvaceous as she was, lacked--by the time he'd met her--Jennifer's dewy fresh youthfulness to go with the genius smarts and the blondness and the pretty tits and the rest of the awesome package. Sam was older, closer to his own age, and just that crucial bit tougher and more jaded.

Also, it had to be admitted, Sam lamentably did not find him appealing despite his arrogant, petty, etc, qualities. Instead, his basic nature, which had served him well enough through most of his life, seemed rather to be an interest-killer for Sam. Inexplicable! Not to mention inconvenient, but there it was.

So even though Sam had Jennifer beaten in intellectual prowess--physics trumps medicine!--she lacked Jennifer's other sterling qualities. He'd had many solo funtimes in bed fantasizing about Sam, and his myriad arguments with her over the years had always been stimulating, in various ways, but Jennifer won here, too, because she invited him to play in bed _with_ her, in real flesh-and-blood person. Yowsa!

Playing with Jennifer occupied a good deal of his fifth year in Atlantis, carrying on through their months stuck floating in the Pacific on Earth. Even after a full year of sharing body fluids and morning breath and toothpaste with Jen, Rodney still sometimes looked at her in awe, seated across from him and speaking animatedly about something or other he wasn't quite listening to, and marveled at his good fortune.

Jeannie might've thought he'd never be able to hook a beautiful, smart, _nice_ woman, but hah! He'd shown her! It took him forty years, but the right woman had finally crossed his path and had even, astonishingly enough, made the _first move_.

 **3.**  
One of the coolest, and unexpected, side-effects of his association with Jennifer was that Rodney slowly shed some of his more perceptibly negative habits. Jennifer just smiled and shook her head, possibly with an occasional slight eye-roll, when he berated morons for being wastes of oxygen (especially in his labs!); or told people unvarnished truths about themselves that everybody else made polite efforts never to mention for some unfathomable reason; or loudly made sure everyone around him knew his credentials and just how many rungs of the ladder of evolutionary intellectualism he was above them: But Jennifer accepted him as he was. Warts and all, so to speak. Not that he had warts--he'd managed, with some contortions, to check even his backside in the mirror; just one of those metaphors useless English majors like Kaleb wielded to obfuscate their own lack of useful skills.

But Jen herself had used the "warts and all" metaphor, which had the odd effect of making the phrase seem flattering and cool. So he was fine with it; actually, quite liked it. He lay in bed at night sometimes, listening to her soft, even breathing beside him in the dark, unwinding to the cheerful thought, "Warts and all."

Since Jennifer liked him despite his so-called warts, he felt no particular compulsion to resort to Compound W for any of them. Somehow, though, possibly by osmosis due to proximity, some of his warts shrank. Just a bit of shrinkage at first, but some of them eventually shrank enough that people noticed, a widening pool of effect spreading around him that finally garnered Rodney's own attention. It took awhile, but once he realized people seemed to be responding more warmly to him--less prickle, more friendliness!--he backtracked. Using his finely honed scientific method, a panoply of spreadsheets, and cleverly subtle questions poised to Atlantis's latest psychologist, he concluded that people were responding more positively to him because he was behaving more positively toward them.

 _Actio et reactio._ One of the basic, simple concepts of physics; and, apparently, of human relations. Who'd've guessed?

Being a scientist of exacting standards, boundless curiosity, and dedicated principles, he'd experimented once he'd formulated his hypothesis. He discovered that even changing as simple an action as smiling rather than frowning tended to elicit a significantly different response in circumstances that would otherwise be identical. Such as, say, meeting a new colleague whose work he happened to know was--by his rigorous standards, if sadly not those of the general scientific community, hence the idiot's induction into the SGC program--trash. But smiling and saying, "Hello!" had a profoundly different result from scowling and saying, "Oh, god, it's you, the embarrassment of MIT foisted off on us."

(The side-effect of Jennifer's surprised delight when he was conducting his social experiments was completely ancillary. Though her pleasure did add to the tangible feeling of general bonhomie when she was smiling brightly along with the object of his focus; and alongside himself, of course.)

As his experiments expanded and grew, he discovered some other English-major claptrap also conveyed a degree of truth. "Catch more flies with honey than vinegar," for instance, turned out to be actually usefully descriptive, in a stupid, roundabout way. As evidence: When he hurt his back while twisted like a pretzel under a broken console, he didn't once have to yell in the lab during his recovery time; scientists who used, pre-Great Experiment, to scuttle out of his path, now actually went out of their way to bring him coffee, and even pudding cups, _without even being asked_. Or ordered. Or sarcastically addressed/insulted/browbeaten. And all, apparently, because he'd been in experimental mode and hadn't yelled at any of them in at least ten days. He'd even made an effort to remember dull details about their off-work activities, with the purpose of gauging the measurable results of making a simulated show of interest in other people's personal lives.

Which...huh. Yelling had always got things done around him in an efficient enough fashion, but not yelling appeared to offer some crucial benefits of its own. The slice of cherry pie with a big dollop of Dream Whip, offered by one of his lab rats completely on her own initiative, was just one concrete demonstration of the practical advantages of his theorem.

He could, naturally, return to his usual behaviors whenever he liked. He wasn't _changing_ , whatever Jeannie said (with totally unwarranted, and rather insulting, shock). He was experimenting. Since his experiments were proving beneficial to himself, he wasn't in any particular rush to conclude them. A good scientist--of which he was the best in any galaxy, universe, or hard-science field you could name!--always gathered more data to support his theorem.

And it wasn't as though getting honey without bothering with catching filthy flies at all didn't have its own demonstrable advantages.

He jerked awake one night in their third month on Earth to the horrified thought that he'd turned into Rod. He lay back down beside the sleeping Jennifer, heart pounding, and stared up at the ceiling. Rod. Seriously? Smarmy smiling Rod oozing charm and good-will and friendliness? He couldn't possibly be mutating into Rod. Could he?

He frowned into the dark. Rod had, admittedly, been almost unanimously liked. Even his own team had seemed to prefer Rod! Even Sheppard had let Rod smarm all over him, which Rod, the creep, had played up by hitting stupid golf balls off the pier with Sheppard and apparently being all competent and knowing. As Rod did. Endlessly. Jeannie had bonded with him right away, as though _he_ were her real brother, not Rodney! And he was pretty sure there'd been some laughter at his expense between Jeannie, his team, and Perfectly Likeable Rod.

Only his team had reassured him, in the end, that they preferred him to Rod. Well, they had after Rod was safely gone back to his own universe. They'd assured him they'd found Rod as creepy as Rodney did. They just hadn't...shown any of that while Rod was actually present.

Not even Sheppard.

Anyway. He couldn't possibly be turning into Rod, because Rod _was_ creepy. Rod was over-the-top nice; if Rod'd been faking interest in all the people and things he'd claimed to enjoy, he was a far more accomplished liar than Rodney would ever manage. That the people presently cluttering the peripheries of Rodney's life were naive enough to buy his pretend interest in them didn't mean he, Rodney, even approached Rod's level of sinister. He suspected, deep down, that Rod had been genuinely _nice_ , which was the real source of the off-kilter vibe he exuded. It just wasn't natural for even a bastard version of Rodney McKay to be that sociable, touchy-feely, and sensitive.

He relaxed. He wasn't any of those things; no worries! He was just experimenting. No harm in accepting the benefits of his controlled and objective research.

Though it was undeniably warming--just a little, occasionally--to be greeted with smiles and genuine interest in his welfare rather than glares and surly mutters behind his back.

But extending his experimental period beyond the point of having satisfactorily proven his theorem didn't make him Rod. Absolutely not.

Jennifer, reassuringly, turned neither warmer nor more expressive toward him due to his Great Experiment, though she did occasionally smile more genuinely when they were out in public together; or, at least, she no longer looked pained at intervals as she had when leading him away from some slagging match with an idiot in his field. Mostly, though, she just seemed as content and pleased with the life they were enjoying together as she had all along.

So it was really kind of disappointing when it all fell apart.

One of the benefits of his experimental persona was that his friendly new self actually proved advantageous when he did his bit to encourage the IOA to sanction Atlantis's return to Pegasus. Working on Atlantis, with all the Ancient tech surrounding them and just waiting to be studied, much of which they'd never had time to do properly while in Pegasus, had made for a great and productive interval, but the flip-side was the annoying amount of oversight while they were on Earth. Smiling through gritted teeth while some numbskull bureaucrat, who lacked the balls to step through the gate himself even once, tried to dictate what Rodney should focus his attention on and what wasn't as important--to Earth, that always meant, rather than to Atlantis's own strength or to Pegasus and its unique problems or, even, to scientific progress in general--wore on his nerves. He wanted to rant; he really, really did. But: honey, not vinegar! Smooth skin, not warts!

He sucked up all the shit, kept smiling and nodding, and ended up playing--which he clapped himself on the back for only in private because bragging was one of the counter-productive traits he'd set aside during his not-Rod experimental phase--a not insignificant role in finally eliciting the IOA's green-light for their return to Pegasus. All right!

He skipped--metaphorically!--to the lab to organize the chaos that would accompany their departure in two weeks; and skipped to Jennifer's room at the end of the long day. He was happy as a lark; happy as a sandboy. All that jazz!

Jennifer was happy, too. She kept the medlab more organized than he did his labs, so she faced less effort in prepping for their return. She'd spent the day interviewing new medical staff and finishing the inventory of supplies they'd need. They lay on the bed together and she listened indulgently as he described, in exquisite detail, the massive amount of work ahead of him. When he ran out of steam, he sighed happily, and she leaned over and kissed his cheek.

"I'm really glad to be going back, too." She smiled, but didn't elaborate further; not even when he remembered to ask her.

Two days before they were due to leave, Jennifer dropped her bombshell.

"But-- I thought--" He ran a hand through his hair, resisting the urge to clutch it just to test that he was really awake. "I thought we were happy together?" He didn't even flinch when his voice came out thin and weak.

"We were! Rodney, it's been great, the best relationship I've ever had!" But her look at him, filled with pleasure and warmth, had nary a hint of sadness.

"But then--?" He waved a hand to encompass the immensity of the failure of a suitable trope to pop into his head.

She gave him one of her sweet looks, this time edged with...sympathy?

"Well, but now we're going back to Pegasus, so everything will change again. You're going to be tied up in the lab for most of each day, and going off-world, and working on all those systems and devices the IOA wouldn't let you get to all this time." She twirled the end of her ponytail around her finger, one of her few nervous gestures. "I guess I got used to our having lots of time-off to spend together. I'd forgotten just how little we actually saw each other before, when we were starting out."

She looked soulfully at him. "I don't think I can go back to that now. It would be a step backward. But I don't think there's any going forward for us, either. Not given the circumstances."

He opened his mouth, willing a protest to pop out, articulate and impassioned; but his mouth just hung open for several seconds as he stared at his beautiful, golden girlfriend as she broke up with him.

She hurried on, before his brain could supply his mouth with anything to say--and he'd never had that problem before the Rod effect!-- "I'm going to be incredibly busy once we get back, too. A lot of catching up to do with our allies, and our abandoned inoculation programs to resume and expand, and trades of medical supplies for goods to negotiate. Plus, I'm also going to be free again to pursue the type of research I really want to do."

She pressed her shoulder against his companionably where they sat next to each other on the bed. "We're both going to have scarcely any free time again, and probably what we do get won't coincide often. You remember how that was? I think maybe, at this point in our lives and careers, we're just both too immersed in our jobs to develop a deep relationship?"

He blinked at the question in her voice. His first impulse was a strong denial, but then he thought about it. Back when they'd started dating, before coming to Earth, it was true they'd snatched time when they could, in between the demands of each of their hectic schedules and the emergencies that appeared as reliably as Old Faithful. These months on Earth had been a luxury, in a way--a frustrating interval professionally, but still a luxury of peace and untrammeled hours--and they'd had chunks of time to do stuff together. Going back to snatched dinners and rushed movie dates and far less sex because of exhaustion and late hours....

Which, okay, yes, it would be hard to go back to those terms, but: not better than nothing?

"I really just think I'll be happier at this point with casual relationships," she said. "You and I went somewhat beyond casual, but...not far enough." She shrugged. "I do care a lot for you, Rodney, really. It's just--our careers are really the bigger loves for both of us. Right?"

He was nodding before he even realized. Because while he loved Jennifer, he wouldn't ever choose a date with her over the chance to explore a new piece of particularly intriguing Ancient tech or fix one of Atlantis's faulty areas. At least, he wouldn't more than a handful of times a month because sex, after all! Sex was good.

"I'll miss the sex." He winced when that popped out, complete with glum voice, but Jennifer, bless her, laughed and bumped his shoulder again.

"Me, too."

They sat in silence, both staring at the wall for a few minutes as they settled into the new situation. When he pushed himself upright to stand beside the bed, she smiled up at him, a touch of wistfulness in her face, but not enough to change her mind, he could tell; and not enough to make him try to change her mind. They'd make good friends, always, and he found he was contented with that state.

"I'll see you around."

Her smile widened and she nodded. "Yeah."

When he glanced back with a little wave from the open doorway, she blew him a kiss followed by a wave, and he laughed and left with a surprising bounce in his step. He hadn't lost Jennifer as a friend; just as a friend with benefits.

He wandered the halls aimlessly for awhile, feeling at a loose end, then snapped his fingers and headed back to his lab. Hell, it was barely midnight; he could get another simulation set-up ready to go in the morning.

And tomorrow, he'd try to time things to have breakfast with his team, who would get to _be_ a team again soon. Teyla and Ronon must be ecstatic at the return to Pegasus at long last, and he wanted to share their joy. Ronon had almost left when the SGC had finally acceded to Sheppard's and Woolsey's arguments that Todd should be sent back before he starved to death (the less he thought about that issue, the better). He wasn't sure what had kept Ronon here, but he figured it was wrapped up in Sheppard, who'd been exuding that steely determination to get them all home safely _somehow_ , come hell or fucking Wraith, that he radiated on dicey missions. Teyla had stayed only because Torren and Kanaan had been on Atlantis when they'd precipitately left Pegasus, but she'd been neither content nor patient with the delays.

Sheppard, when they'd got the word about their return, had finally lost all the tension he'd been broadcasting for months, slumping into a happy slacker slouch like the bean-bag person he was at heart.

Sheppard would be insanely busy, too, prepping for their return. Once they were back, though, he could hang out with Sheppard again, now his limited free time wouldn't be devoted to Jennifer. His mouth quirked up as he thought of sitting on the pier downing beers, and getting their racing cars out of mothballs, and beating (okay, trying to beat) Sheppard at chess.

And Sheppard had been a friend with benefits, too, pre-Jennifer.

He couldn't see any reason not to pursue that mutually beneficial...outlet again. Even his pseudo-Rod persona couldn't see anything wrong with the plan; Rod himself certainly hadn't hidden his desire to get into Sheppard's pants, the squirrelly little rat-bastard! Sheppard, being a guy--a guy's guy, even--would understand why Rodney had snatched at the chance to be with Jennifer, even if Sheppard had shown lamentable lack of taste in not being even remotely interested in her himself. Hell, Sheppard had barely even bothered to cock-block him with Jen, which was...hmm, thinking about it: pretty much a first.

Sheppard, for all his apparent obliviousness, had a sort of sixth sense about these matters. He'd probably known Rodney's fling with Jennifer wouldn't last and had just decided to wait it out. Rodney rubbed his hands as he reached the lab. He'd loved sex with Jennifer, but he'd missed sex with Sheppard, too; the hard, hairy, driving frenzy of it. Plus the most awesome blowjobs he'd ever experienced. And while he'd loved giving Jen oral sex, he'd also kinda-sorta missed the weight and taste of Sheppard's cock in his mouth and Sheppard's rough, broken growls.

Yeah. Friends with benefits: the most perfect arrangement in the world.

 **4.**  
"Friends with benefits" had a little catch to it in that the participants had to be _friends_ before they could even approach the benefits part. Rodney, to his befuddlement, discovered elephantine obstacles in his quest to reconnect, outside of work, with Sheppard. Work was fine, same as ever: Sheppard was sarcastic and pushy, and Rodney weathered it with his now honed pseudo-Rod affability that made people across the spectrum from kitchen staff to Woolsey beam at him with freakish indulgence.

All except Sheppard, who greeted each of Rodney's smiles and pleasant quips with indifference bordering on complete distraction.

Rodney had fortuitously found Sheppard eating alone in the mess the day before they'd headed back to Pegasus. He'd plopped his tray down and sat opposite him. After suctioning up half his cup of coffee, he looked across at Sheppard.

"Jennifer and I broke up." He thought about it and added, "Well, in fairness, she broke up with me."

"Yeah?" Sheppard paused in mid-chew, then resumed and swallowed. "That's too bad. You okay?"

"Yup. Actually, she made sense; we're neither of us really ready for a serious relationship, which is why we didn't, you know--" he gestured vaguely "--get to that point even in the best of conditions. Casual suits both our lifestyles better."

He looked expectantly at Sheppard, who could usually be relied on to read between the lines of guy-talk--which was to say, more silence than talk. Sheppard, though, was giving a cheerful nod to someone across the room. Rodney twisted around in time to see Lorne dropping into a seat with a return nod and smile for his CO.

Rodney took a bite of his sandwich, but remembered, Rod-like, not to speak until he'd masticated and swallowed it. "So, what d'you say? You up for the crushing defeat of watching my super-wheels blow past your clunker?" He smiled, but now found Sheppard's attention focused out the window, where...nothing was happening. Except some seagulls circling.

"Hello? Earth to Sheppard." He snapped his fingers in Sheppard's vicinity, but not close enough to be annoying.

Sheppard turned to him with an eyebrow lifting. "Hmmm?"

"Cars? Race? Crushing disappointment of your inevitable defeat?"

"Oh, sure. We'll have to do that. I'll be pretty busy the next few days, though."

"Yeah, me, too. But once we're settled, home sweet home and all that jazz--" he stabbed his fork into a cherry tomato with chirpy abandon "--your mechanical ass will be _mine_."

He gave Sheppard another meaningful guy-look, but Sheppard didn't glance at him, intent on dipping the last of his chips in ketchup. Sheppard hummed a sort of response, though, before leaving with a wave to bus his tray and saunter out the door.

Rodney had shrugged to himself and settled down to contemplate the return to normality. He and Sheppard had had a lot of sex after evenings of hot competition doing their best to cream each other on their makeshift racetrack. Sometimes, they'd even made it to one of their rooms before giving in to the sizzle between them. Anticipation itself was a fun state; it swept him through the hours of prep for their return.

Once safely back in Pegasus after an uneventful trip, though, Rodney had a lot more work to do settling all his new minions in than he'd planned for. Still, expecting the unexpected was SOP for Pegasus, and he had to admit he thrived on it. Sheppard, not surprisingly, also had masses of time-sucking crap to do re-establishing gate teams and deploying new troops with seasoned ones, and overseeing training exercises and suchlike military doings. Teyla reconnected with the Athosians, then she and Ronon spent a good deal of time off-world checking in with allies.

So it wasn't surprising that he didn't see much of Sheppard for the first couple of weeks. The team went on two missions in that time, managed not to get shot at either time, though also didn't discover anything particularly beneficial. The four of them meshed smoothly back into the well-oiled unit they'd been for four years, which was its own unique bliss.

Feeling restless and hyper after their second uncomplicated mission, Rodney waved at Teyla and Ronon as he scrambled to follow Sheppard out of the locker room and down the corridor.

"Hey, wanna grab a beer? The good stock won't last forever, so we might as well enjoy it while we can. I'll meet you on the pier in ten?"

Sheppard smiled at him, but while the lines around his eyes crinkled, his eyes themselves flicked off Rodney's face to over his shoulder. Rodney resisted the urge to look behind himself; he knew no one was there.

"Sorry, buddy, got a late meeting with Lorne over a problem that came up today. Rain-check!"

Sheppard waggled his fingers and sauntered away, loose and rumpled sexiness prowling the copper halls. He listened to Sheppard's off-tune whistle of something Cash-like getting fainter, then detoured to his room for a quick R&R session with his hand before consoling himself in the mess with a late-night snack and a lively argument with Radek, which they followed up with a killer chess match.

Sadly, neither he nor Radek had ever found a sexual component within their mutual competitiveness.

Sheppard, bizarrely, seemed to have a lot more trouble getting his department on-track than Rodney did; Sheppard never scrounged up a free moment to just hang out and be... _guys_. He was always with Teyla and/or Ronon and/or Lorne and/or, gah, even Woolsey! Or random marines! Or even, a few times, random _scientists_ , and what the fuck was that about? Sheppard sitting around talking and laughing with some soft-scientist nerd with bad hair and not even a single tit in sight? What the hell?

"Have you noticed anything weird about Sheppard?" he asked Ronon and Teyla one day at lunch.

"All Earth people are weird," Ronon said, between gargantuan bites out of a burger-of-sorts.

Rodney waved that away. "Not as weird as Pegasus people, but I'll grant you a baseline abnormality lurking in many of the ones who end up at the SGC. But _Sheppard_ , even beyond his clearly aberrant personality defects, is acting weirder than usual, right?"

Ronon considered for a moment, then said, "No," and plunged back into eating.

Rodney turned to Teyla, who was wearing her Mona-Lisa smile, the one that said, "I have many complicated and fascinating thoughts on this subject, but I'm not going to attempt to articulate them because it would take more patience and energy than I care to waste trying to make you see past the very short nose on your face, so I'll just dumb this down to Torren's level." Rodney tried not to squirm under her straight gaze. Becoming sensitive to nuances in other people's behavior wasn't always the funnest state; nobody ever mentioned that defect in the process!

"John has struck me as very relaxed and contented since our return home."

"Yes, but--" He frowned and twirled a hand in the air to aid the passage of his thoughts. "Relaxed? Every time I see him, he's rushing off about some urgent task, can't pause even for a beer or to take a breath or...well. Anything. Recreational." He cleared his throat and willed his fair skin not to blush.

Teyla had raised an eyebrow and Ronon was staring at him. He looked back and forth between them. "What?"

Teyla looked down at her salad. "John was certainly very busy when we returned, as we all were, but we've recently resumed our previous regular sparring sessions, and John's been spending time with Torren and on my people's new homeworld."

"Yeah, we're pretty much back into our old routine." Ronon shrugged. "Run most mornings; sparring or checking out new weapons; watching movies."

Rodney felt a stab of hurt. "You've had team movie nights without me?"

"Nah," Ronon said. "Sheppard and I just watch a movie together once in awhile. They're good for a laugh. Mostly monsters eating cities or people and stuff. For a planet without any real monsters, your people sure like to invent them." The corollary _weird_ in his voice was unspoken but clear.

"John also picked up some entertainment DVDs on Earth that are suitable for Torren, so he brings one over once a week and we all enjoy it together."

"I liked that _Fantasia_ one." Ronon spoke with an absolute lack of irony that side-railed Rodney's outrage for a moment.

"It features a cartoon mouse." He felt like a lone cork bobbing in a vast, empty ocean.

"Torren also enjoyed that one." Teyla smiled another secretive smile, this one suggesting she knew exactly where Rodney was floundering, but had no intention of tossing him more than a minimal life-line.

Rodney took a deep breath and mentally plunked himself firmly onto dry ground. He ticked off on his fingers: "So, he's running with Ronon; sparring with both of you; hanging out in the armory with Ronon, when he's not hanging out in there with Lorne; watching movies with Ronon; watching movies with Torren and the rest of you; and spending his spare time on Athos Redux, which probably involves that Belkan ale Halling favors."

Ronon shrugged. "You forgot the golf," he said, and took off--probably to hang out with Sheppard! The selfish bastards!

Rodney gritted his teeth and turned his eyes on Teyla with what he hoped was an expressive, though dignified, summation of his wounded feelings, and was in no way a pout.

"He's doing stuff with everybody except _me_."

She patted his hand. "Our lives are all slowly getting back to normal. I'm sure with time the rest of his old routines will resume."

"But--last! Why am I last?" She tilted her head and left with a sympathetic smile, leaving him to stare blankly around himself at the cheerful bustle.

Being a scientist of prodigious talent, the first thing he did when he bustled back to his lab was make a spreadsheet. He also drew up a graph and a pie-chart, to be thorough. Then he had to break to fix a problem in the sewage cleaning plant, which took time because he walked the newbie idiot who'd caused the problem through the basics of handling the Ancient mechanism; he'd discovered in Rod-state it wasted less time in the long run to teach idiots how not to be as big an idiot next time than it did to berate them for being idiots in the first place while doing all the work himself. And there was still the satisfaction of yelling at the Ancients _in absentia_ and their equipment in the immediate; that type of yelling actually led to _bonding_ , which in turn created more eager help and openness to learning. Another unfathomable, but handy, fact!

He eventually, after observation (which is to say, stealth sneakiness even creepy Rod couldn't have bettered!), managed to get Sheppard's typical day mapped out. And Sheppard's typical day, even penciling in golf, computer golf, showers after running and sparring--extra quarter hour appended to the afternoon shower for a quick jerk-off, since Rodney refused to pencil in even the possibility of Sheppard's having sexual shenanigans with soft scientists with or without tits--still had blank periods. Empty periods of time that Sheppard seemed to be spending alone in his room:

Periods of time that neatly correlated to the ones he used to spend with Rodney. What the effing fuck?

"Are you mad or, I don't know, holding a grudge because I stopped having sex with you to have sex with Jennifer instead? Because I would understand that desire to be punitive, I really _really_ would, as inconvenient as it is, but it just doesn't seem terribly...guy-like?"

Sheppard blinked at him over the top of a comic book before drawling. "Hello to you, too, McKay. Come on in, don't wait for an invitation. No need to stand on ceremony. Mi casa es su casa."

"Thanks," he said, distractedly, then realized what he'd done and stopped in mid-reach for Sheppard's office chair. He straightened. "Oh. Um, I'm sorry? For barging in. I just knew--that is, I thought you might be free for a brief chat right now, and I just didn't think. Got carried away." He circled a finger beside his temple. "In my head, thinking too much, you know how it goes? Anyway, yes, my apologies! Is it okay if I come in? And sit down for a minute?"

He hovered, waiting for permission. Sheppard had switched his attention back to his comic in the middle of Rodney's apology, and only looked up again when the silence stretched for a few seconds.

"Sure." He waved a hand, then turned his wrist to look at his watch. "I don't have much time, but I can spare a couple of minutes."

Rodney sat with a thump and stared at Sheppard after that bare-faced lie. Sheppard made a get-on-with-it gesture.

"Right." He cleared his throat. "As I was saying, I can completely understand if you were miffed when I--"

"I wasn't miffed." Sheppard grinned, but it was turned inwards, a private joke. "We had sex. Then you decided to have sex with someone else. Serial monogamy's cool; much better than the alternatives."

Sheppard propelled himself upright in one of his lithe moves, dropping the comic book and pulling his T-shirt down over his hairy stomach in one motion. Rodney blinked his eyes up the long, lean torso to Sheppard's beard-shadowed jaw line, then farther up still to his eyes--which were flicking a glance at his damned watch again.

"Okay, gotta run. Lorne gets pissy when I leave him kicking his heels in the office for too long. Everything cleared up now, buddy?"

Sheppard was pulling on his boots, just looping the laces rather than bothering to pull them tight; when he straightened, he grabbed his jacket and shrugged into it. Rodney stood up.

"I--yes? I guess so?"

"Cool." Sheppard flashed him a smile and strode toward the door.

Rodney found his voice and rushed to say, "So, since we got that cleared up, maybe we can hang out sometime?"

"Hmm?" Sheppard glanced back from the door.

"You know, do something together? Like we used to before--uh, before?"

He watched a blank look descend over Sheppard's face, though Sheppard was still smiling, and Rodney hastened to add, "Maybe have a beer together? Or race the cars? Like we used to?"

"Right, sure. Sounds good. I need to fix my car, but I'll get back to you."

Sheppard waved his hand over the door control, and Rodney had to call, "Fix it?"

Sheppard glanced back from the hallway. "Yeah, Torren broke one of the wheels off, but I'm sure I can fix it. See you at the briefing!" With a wave, he disappeared down the corridor.

Rodney stared at the door as it slid back closed in front of him, blanking his view. Did this kind of confusing shit happen to Rod? Because people mostly _enjoyed_ talking to him now! Like they had Rod!

And Sheppard hadn't ever brushed off Rod; he was pretty damned certain of that. So what the fuck?

:::::::

So, here he was, the smartest _and_ one of the most popular people in the city, a two-fer which was surprisingly awesome and rad and solid and all that slang-speak stuff (knowledge of the vernacular turned out to be a minor but significant tool in initiating bonds with colleagues, particularly younger ones--who'd've suspected that crap was good for something?), yet Sheppard wouldn't give him the time of day. Or...he likely would, but with a bland smile, restless eyes, and a wave as he took off down the corridor.

Rodney devoted all his spare moments to studying the problem. Despite more attempts--on his most polite behavior, too!--to speak to Sheppard alone, he never got more than a few moments of Sheppard's inattention. It was like Sheppard wasn't home every time Rodney called, even when Rodney was standing close enough to smell his Aqua Velva and sweat and feel the warmth of Sheppard's skin and see the goddamned _pulse_ in Sheppard's _neck_.

"I think I'm in an Alternate Universe Detector bubble," he told Teyla after another exasperating non-encounter with Sheppard after a briefing. "A narrow field that only activates when I get to within four feet of Sheppard. It, you know--" he waved a hand half-heartedly "--replaces the illusion of the real Sheppard with an alt-universe version. I'm the only person who knows there's a vacuous, robot Sheppard popping over here regularly."

"I see." Teyla pursed her lips, then nodded. "I had a very dear friend when I was a child. Her name was Miria, which I thought was the loveliest name in the world. She lived in the lake, and in rivers and streams, and even in the water barrels. I was at least seven before I realized no one saw her except me." She gave him a bright smile and walked away.

He banged his head against the wall, then trailed off to his lab to study the Sheppard Pie-Chart of Many Colors one more time.

:::::::

Everything snapped into abrupt focus on PY5-78D. The people in the settlement nearest the gate were cautious, but warm-hearted; pleasant, family-oriented folks in a proto-industrial society. Rodney hadn't found anything on the scanner to suggest secret, underground bunkers, so he'd relaxed after the first low-key encounter. In Rod-mode--now automatic--he pretended to be listening attentively as Teyla did the meet-and-greet, while he let his gaze and his mind wander.

And they wandered, of course, to Sheppard, standing on Teyla's other side. His hands were resting on the P-90 hanging from the ring on his Tac vest, an affable, relaxed pose that made him look charmingly harmless. He was smiling and his eyes were set on the villagers without meeting any individual's eyes. He nodded occasionally like a programmed puppet to the cadence of Teyla's voice.

Sheppard was bored out of his skull. Rodney snorted--quietly! to himself!--as he recognized the bland, inattentive--

Oh, for fuck's sake! His own auto-pilot smile slid off Rodney's face as he recognized that damned look.

"You--" he sputtered over Teyla's voice, turning to face Sheppard. "Oh my god, you find me _boring_! You find me as _boring_ as you do all these people!"

Sheppard turned to face him, bland look dissolving into surprise, then into narrowed eyes and a tight mouth. Sheppard indicated the village spokespeople with a slanting sidewise look, and hissed, "Not now, McKay."

But he couldn't fucking _believe it_ : "You actually find me as moronic and uninteresting as--"

Sheppard gave a curt nod, which Rodney only understood when Ronon wrapped a hard hand around his arm and jerked him away from the group.

"What, what? Let me go!"

Ronon didn't let go of him until they were out of sight behind a cottage. Rodney huffed and smoothed his crumpled jacket sleeve down.

"Did you see that? Did you see the way he was standing there all smarmy, pretending to be interested, but inside you just know he's thinking about how to improve his overswing or debating the relative merits of Catwoman versus Wonder Woman."

Ronon rolled his eyes and peeked around the corner.

"Um, pitchforks?"

"Nope, we're good." Ronon stared down at him. "You back in the game?"

Rodney snorted. "Who the hell is teaching you all this slang?"

"Who's teaching it to you?"

As he strolled out from behind the cottage like he'd just taken a planned and highly enjoyable detour, he huffed, "I don't need to be taught it; I'm a natural."

Ronon chuckled, deep and low. "Natural cowering might be good now. Teyla'll gut you if you've ruined her efforts to get a supply of heren seed flour."

Rodney smiled brightly as they rejoined the others; ignoring Sheppard's gimlet eye trained on him, he used Rod-tactics to smooth, entertain, and apologize all in one go. Quite well done, if he did say so himself; and he did have to say so himself because it was certain Sheppard wouldn't, or Teyla, whose own bland smile turned on him had the chill of a bottomless lake. One harboring an alien Ogopogo.

"Okay, screwed up, sorry!" he said as soon as the four of them had been shown to rooms in the inn for the night and gathered in Sheppard's before going down to dinner.

His effort to get Sheppard alone before dinner fizzled, though, as Sheppard simply pushed past him in the doorway, brushing him aside like a flimsy curtain. Rodney consoled himself with several heren seed cakes--with toasted heren seed on top, yum!--slathered with honey.

Sheppard thought he was _boring_.

Sheppard wasn't mad at him for ending their mutually satisfying friends-with-benefits arrangement. No, that would be too normal a reaction for Sheppard. Ordinary people might be offended, maybe even hold a bit of a grudge; any number of rational responses to such a situation. They might possibly even have had their feelings hurt at being dumped for a gorgeous blonde genius twenty-something, even if they were themselves an unreasonably hot and rakish forty-something brunet with Mount Everest levels of charm.

But Sheppard's nose wasn't out of joint, to roll with the metaphors. He just now found Rodney...dull.

"I can't believe you!" he hissed, when he sneaked into Sheppard's room late that night, speaking immediately so Sheppard wouldn't shoot him with the gleaming gun that immediately appeared in his hand.

Shutting the door once Sheppard put the nine mil back on the bedside crate, Rodney paced through the long fingers of moonlight striping the floor.

"You're the only person in the entire city, not to mention galaxy--no, make that two galaxies!--who doesn't like me better now."

He slumped onto the end of Sheppard's bed, vaguely aware of Sheppard pulling his feet out from under him with a put-upon grunt. Rodney pinched the bridge of his nose.

"How did this become my life?"

"Yeah, I'm asking myself that same question," Sheppard drawled, as he settled back down in bed with a certain amount of kicking at Rodney's backside that Rodney ignored.

"This whole thing is so Sheppard-y I can't even--"

"Sheppard-y?" He could practically hear Sheppard's eyebrows squinching together in the dark.

He snapped, "It's like Ancient-y, so don't even start."

Silence followed his outburst. Rodney opened his mouth, about to apologize sweetly and insincerely, then snapped it shut again with an audible click of his teeth. Which Sheppard of the bat-ears clearly heard, since he chuckled.

"And the most Sheppard-y part of it isn't even that it's insane, so insane it wasn't predictable by even the most stringent scientific method. It's that--" he twisted around to face Sheppard, who was mostly just a glint of eyes and the suggestion of unruly dark hair against a pale pillow "--you liked Rod!"

"I liked Rod?" Sheppard had a sexy timbre in his voice even at the best of times. Here and now, tinged with Rodney's frustration.... "What, you think you're Rod now?"

"No, I don't think I'm Rod!" He possibly lost control of his flapping hand at that point, which possibly flapped against Sheppard's thigh.

"Hey."

"I'm not anything like Rod, who was creepy. You said so yourself!" He pointed a finger at Sheppard.

He could just make out Sheppard's shrug. He couldn't see a suggestive gleam of teeth; but, then, Sheppard didn't show his teeth much when he smiled. People mostly needed to be on guard when Sheppard smiled with his teeth.

Though he did a variety of other interesting things with his teeth. Dammit.

"I'm not creepy! Not like Rod at all, really. I've just taken onboard a few lessons from Rod's peculiarly successful interactions with people and managed to parlay my observations into--"

"Yup, good for you; nice success story there, buddy." Sheppard yawned. "Shut the door on your way out, will you?"

"Jesus Christ!"

He shoved Sheppard over and crawled under the blanket, taking over half the pillow. Sheppard sighed and turned onto his side, back to Rodney, making sure to stick his pointy elbow into Rodney's sternum as he turned over.

"Why did I miss your ludicrously passive-aggressive, smug self, anyway?" Rodney turned onto his side behind Sheppard and tucked an arm around Sheppard's skinny middle. He hoped his chin dug into Sheppard's shoulder, but it probably wasn't pointy enough. Pointiness was entirely in Sheppard's arsenal.

 **5.**  
So here he was, stuck with the most ridiculous dilemma in the history of humankind: To be or not to be a jerk?

He'd grown to actually, sort of, enjoy being liked. If nothing else, it was useful! Who knew happier minions would make for a more productive, even less annoying, work space? Even more extraordinary, who'd've ever guessed top-of-their-field scientists would find empty flattery and false smiles enough to make them happier, hence more constructive, minions?

Well, he'd always figured people were strange; his experiments in Rod-mode had simply provided concrete proof.

Still. The point was, being less of a dick had tangible, real-world benefits. Indeed, the only non-benefit he'd encountered was Sheppard's asinine reaction to the New and Improved (not-Rod!) Rodney.

"I like everybody liking me," he told Ronon glumly as he braced for another whack from the fighting stick across his pillow-protected middle. "Is that as pathetic as it sounds?"

"The Wraith don't like you." Ronon waited for him to stop staggering and brace himself before whacking him again. "The Genii don't like you. The Olesians would probably hate you, if they weren't all dead. I'm pretty sure Larrin can't stand you, and those folks you insulted on Tarania, Liris, Marcum, Phuun, Ninkh, Rastelleh--"

Rodney let his stick fall, gaping. "Oh my god, stop! They just hate the old me! They haven't met the new me, that's all. Everybody likes the new me. Except Sheppard, who finds me _boring_."

Ronon shrugged. "You've always been boring. You just used to be amusing with it sometimes."

"Oh, thank you very much for that concise summation, Mr. Affability." Then he snapped his stick up into position as Ronon stalked him with long sideways steps and glimmering eyes.

"It's not all bad," Ronon said, circling behind him. "I still get some fun out of watching you trip over your feet trying to be nice to everybody."

The most obvious solution, which took Rodney only two days to figure out--genius in action!--was to go back to being his old self with Sheppard, but retain his Rod-like persona with everyone else. Best of both worlds!

...Except, of course, for the little flaw that became apparent, in that he spent a good portion of his days _with Sheppard_ , including the entirety of his time off-world, many meals, and endless briefings and staff meetings, not to mention the regular crises that popped up like ducks at a shooting gallery. It belatedly occurred to him he'd have to stop boring Sheppard in public before he had a hope of seeing Sheppard in private for more than two seconds running. And if matters worked out as Rodney hoped, Sheppard would eventually resume dropping into the lab regularly, too, which would mean even in there, pseudo-Rod would have to be retired.

The worst part of the situation was that Rodney was...okay, it was dumb, but he was lonely. He'd had Sheppard for the first four years of their time here, and Jennifer for the final year and their stay on Earth, and now he had no one. He'd forgotten just how desperately lacking he found spending time with himself unless he was working. Which he did for the majority of each day, but he couldn't fill every hour with work. Radek took to muttering in Czech, for one thing, which never boded well.

So Rodney was stuck wrestling with his dilemma: should he opt for everybody liking him except Sheppard ( _con: no Sheppard + no sex_ ), or for everybody hating him except Sheppard ( _pro: Sheppard + sex_ ). He devised new pie-charts and spreadsheets. He added in non-Sheppardian factors, like the actual possibility now, and for the future if he retained his Rod-like demeanor, of having sex with someone, or even multiple someones, other than Sheppard. He only toyed with that notion, though, before discarding it. He'd forced himself to stop using Jennifer as a jerk-off fantasy since their parting, but he couldn't seem to replace Sheppard in his mind with anybody else, no matter how many of his more appealing (physically speaking) lab rats smiled at him on any given day.

Anyway, even if he gave up on Sheppard as a sex partner, he'd still be left with the Sheppard-sized hole in his life.

On the plus side, he was almost entirely certain Teyla and Ronon wouldn't hate him if he reverted; he might lack Rod's disturbing facility in reading people, but he knew they'd liked him just fine before. Just as Jennifer had. And Radek sometimes squinted at him now, like he was suspicious of the pseudo-Rod skin, so he figured Radek wouldn't be wholly unhappy to see the old Rodney back. Jeannie might be exasperated at losing the shiny, improved version of him, but she'd had more years of his true self to get used to him than anyone else, so he didn't think she'd kick him off her doorstep. Kick him probably, but only after she'd let him in the house.

Which just left minions and Woolsey and the SGC/IOA and nameless people off-world; so, really, what would he be losing? He'd survived forty years without cheery scientists bringing him pie with dollops of Dream Whip of their own volition; anyway, now they were back in Pegasus, the Dream Whip would soon be gone, so no point even factoring it in.

He pored over his charts, isolating his constants (Teyla, Ronon, Radek, Jen; Jeannie), then separating out his variables. Variable. One big fucking asshole of a Variable.

And he made a startling discovery.

He cornered Sheppard just after he'd settled with a bowl of fish stew on PXT-148. The day was balmy, the air spicy with the pleasant scent of the indigenous vegetation mixed with salt from the inland sea the village sat beside. The people were friendly and eager to trade; Teyla and Ronon had just returned from touring their hosts' fields and were doing the thanking thing. Rodney reckoned he had five minutes max before Teyla and Ronon joined them.

"Okay, here's the thing: I think you're a completely unreasonable, selfish dick and, honestly, a mental deviant of catastrophic proportions, and I miss you so fucking much I want to gnaw off my arm."

Sheppard, hallelujah, didn't look vacant or distracted or untouchable at last, but like a deer in headlights.

"Uh--"

"The most bizarre part of this farcical situation?" Rodney met Sheppard's wide eyes with a wry shake of his head. "I always thought the beauty between the two of us lay in the 'benefits' part of the 'friends with benefits,' you know? Turns out, not so much. It's the friends bit that carries all the weight. That's what ended up being most important with Jennifer, and it's what I miss with you with an unholy ache.

"And since you're a colossal jerk, I'm going to have to do the heavy lifting." He heaved a sigh. "As usual."

"Rodney--"

Seeing Teyla and Ronon approaching with their lunch bowls, Rodney fixed an eye on Sheppard and leaned closer across the table. "Original Rodney McKay is back in residence, Sheppard. You have been warned."

As Sheppard choked on air, Rodney picked up his spoon and turned to his teammates with a pithy comment about sand as a local condiment.

 **6.**  
Six weeks' hard labor, but all worth it in the end. He was pretty sure he'd expended less effort regaining Sheppard's trust after Doranda than he'd had to exercise to win back Sheppard's friendship this time, the bastard. It'd been at least three weeks after he'd reclaimed his title as Supreme Asshole before he'd finally seen the first hint of a tiny, secretive smile around the edges of Sheppard's mouth during one of Rodney's more arrogant public displays.

But he supposed that, while Sheppard might not have been _miffed_ , per se, at Rodney's dumping him for Jennifer, Sheppard might have been secretly harboring a bit of...irritation. Which needed to be exorcised. In some convoluted Sheppard-y way that principally involved Making Rodney Suffer.

He waved a mental hand, feeling too languid to lift a real one, which was trapped under Sheppard's sweaty shoulder, anyway. And his other one.... He smiled, gave Sheppard's sticky cock a gentle squeeze, and let it go.

He pulled back carefully, separating their torsos before the spattered come dried further and glued them together. Sheppard's eyes slitted open, dark lashes casting shadows on skin burnished gold in the candlelight. Sheppard must buy candles by the dozen in that Istarren market he liked. It was a good look on Sheppard, so Rodney wasn't going to complain. He'd even missed Sheppard's curtains sparkling in the half-assed light; which, god, just shoot him now for even having noticed that factoid.

He jerked his hand out from under Sheppard's back, ignoring Sheppard's grunted protest, and climbed out of bed. He stretched his back, and held the pose a little longer as he saw Sheppard's eyes following the flex of muscle in his ass. He gave Sheppard a full-on view as he walked to the bathroom; the fucking half-light was a good look on him, too, he knew. He came back with a damp cloth and swiped it over Sheppard's hairy body just enough to make things comfortable for himself, then slid back into bed.

"The one thing I don't get," he said, once they were finally settled against each other in the pint-sized bed, "is how you're the biggest jerk in the city, the galaxy, hell, the entire SG-fucking-C, but also liked by virtually everyone, near and far, the clever and the dim."

"I could recite a long list of people who don't like me, Rodney, starting with most of my family and going through every CO I've ever had except Elizabeth and Carter." Sheppard sounded as limply fucked-out as his body felt, draped half over Rodney.

Rodney swirled his fingers absently around Sheppard's shoulder blade and counted down the bony markers of his spine. "Even Todd has the hots for you, of all the hellacious images."

"Ewww, do you mind? Not right before I go to sleep."

"I know, it's disturbing. Much like your ability to be both a gigantic dick and Mr. Popular at the same fucking time."

"That's Col--"

Rodney laughed, spontaneous and shining, bright as the wash of the two moons over Atlantis' towers. Sheppard's head bounced against his chest and he growled sleepily before settling himself. Rodney resumed tracing idle spirals over Sheppard's back.

"Let's never do serial friendship again, okay? Because that fucking sucked."

He poked until Sheppard mumbled agreement. Sheppard added, in a pointed voice, "Good _night_ , McKay."

He cupped Sheppard's hand where it lay on his stomach and let his entire body ooze into the mattress. "Night, John."


End file.
